RBC Wealth Management has confirmed it will leave its international wealth management business in the Caribbean and other international private banking and international advisory groups in Toronto, Montreal, and the US, as confirmed to Funds Society by a company spokesman, who wished to emphasize that these segments “only represent a small part of the RBC Wealth Management business.”
According to a release by the firm earlier this year “the international division of RBC Wealth Management-U.S. serves high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients worldwide from offices in New York, Houston, Miami, San Diego, Seattle and Wilmington, Del. More than 50 international financial advisors and private bankers serve the needs of international and domestic clients through private banking, credit, investment management, asset management, trusts and other solutions”.
Refering to the closure, RBC Wealth Management said it “is undertaking a process of realigning certain businesses within their international operations as part of a focused strategy that allows us to achieve sustainable, controlled, and profitable growth in our core markets, while providing an excellent service to our customers.”
This closure is in addition to those already announced in October and which resulted in the closure of the private banking offices in Miami and Houston, two units which specialized in cross-border business, which is now in the process of decommissioning. Now, the closure also affects the broker dealer business in the US and Canada related to international clients. We must recall that in April, the largest Canadian bank also announced its departure from the Chilean market after six years in the marketplace, a decision which was also due to a “strategic review” of its business in Latin America. A year earlier, RBC closed its offices in Uruguay.
RBC Wealth Management ensures that it looks at the business in a scalable way and aims more towards the business of wealth management focused on serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients from their key operations centers in Canada, United States, the British Isles and Asia, “because we know that we are more successful when we leverage and build on the strength of the other RBC businesses.”
Finally, the same source stressed that they shall continue to serve their customers as they strategically exit those businesses.
The business of RBC WM is among the five largest in the world. RBC Wealth Management has more than $ 442 billion Canadian dollars (392 billion US dollars) in assets under management.